Sharp H\"older continuity of tangent cones for spaces with a lower Ricci curvature bound and applications

We prove a new kind of estimate that holds on any manifold with lower Ricci bounds. It relates the geometry of two small balls with the same radius, potentially far apart, but centered in the interior of a common minimizing geodesic. It reveals new, previously unknown, properties that all generalized spaces with a lower Ricci curvature bound must have and it has a number of applications. This new kind of estimate asserts that the geometry of small balls along any minimizing geodesic changes in a H\"older continuous way with a constant depending on the lower bound for the Ricci curvature, the dimension of the manifold, and the distance to the end points of the geodesic. We give examples that show that the H\"older exponent, along with essentially all the other consequences that we show follow from this estimate, are sharp. The unified theme for all of these applications is convexity. Among the applications is that the regular set is convex for any non-collapsed limit of Einstein metrics. In the general case of potentially collapsed limits of manifolds with just a lower Ricci curvature bound we show that the regular set is weakly convex and $a.e.$ convex, that is almost every pair of points can be connected by a minimizing geodesic whose interior is contained in the regular set. We also show two conjectures of Cheeger-Colding. One of these asserts that the isometry group of any, even collapsed, limit of manifolds with a uniform lower Ricci curvature bound is a Lie group; the key point for this is to rule out small subgroups. The other asserts that the dimension of any limit space is the same everywhere. Finally, we show that a Reifenberg type property holds for collapsed limits and discuss why this indicate further regularity of manifolds and spaces with Ricci curvature bounds.Comment: 48 page

Tangential dimensions I. Metric spaces

Pointwise tangential dimensions are introduced for metric spaces. Under regularity conditions, the upper, resp. lower, tangential dimensions of X at x can be defined as the supremum, resp. infimum, of box dimensions of the tangent sets, a la Gromov, of X at x. Our main purpose is that of introducing a tool which is very sensitive to the "multifractal behaviour at a point" of a set, namely which is able to detect the "oscillations" of the dimension at a given point. In particular we exhibit examples where upper and lower tangential dimensions differ, even when the local upper and lower box dimensions coincide. Tangential dimensions can be considered as the classical analogue of the tangential dimensions for spectral triples introduced in math.OA/0202108 and math.OA/0404295, in the framework of Alain Connes' noncommutative geometry.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. This version corresponds to the first part of v1, the second part being now included in math.FA/040517

Dimensional flow and fuzziness in quantum gravity: emergence of stochastic spacetime

We show that the uncertainty in distance and time measurements found by the heuristic combination of quantum mechanics and general relativity is reproduced in a purely classical and flat multi-fractal spacetime whose geometry changes with the probed scale (dimensional flow) and has non-zero imaginary dimension, corresponding to a discrete scale invariance at short distances. Thus, dimensional flow can manifest itself as an intrinsic measurement uncertainty and, conversely, measurement-uncertainty estimates are generally valid because they rely on this universal property of quantum geometries. These general results affect multi-fractional theories, a recent proposal related to quantum gravity, in two ways: they can fix two parameters previously left free (in particular, the value of the spacetime dimension at short scales) and point towards a reinterpretation of the ultraviolet structure of geometry as a stochastic foam or fuzziness. This is also confirmed by a correspondence we establish between Nottale scale relativity and the stochastic geometry of multi-fractional models.Comment: 25 pages. v2: minor typos corrected, references adde

The multiplicative coalescent, inhomogeneous continuum random trees, and new universality classes for critical random graphs

One major open conjecture in the area of critical random graphs, formulated by statistical physicists, and supported by a large amount of numerical evidence over the last decade [23, 24, 28, 63] is as follows: for a wide array of random graph models with degree exponent $\tau\in (3,4)$, distances between typical points both within maximal components in the critical regime as well as on the minimal spanning tree on the giant component in the supercritical regime scale like $n^{(\tau-3)/(\tau-1)}$. In this paper we study the metric space structure of maximal components of the multiplicative coalescent, in the regime where the sizes converge to excursions of L\'evy processes "without replacement" [10], yielding a completely new class of limiting random metric spaces. A by-product of the analysis yields the continuum scaling limit of one fundamental class of random graph models with degree exponent $\tau\in (3,4)$ where edges are rescaled by $n^{-(\tau-3)/(\tau-1)}$ yielding the first rigorous proof of the above conjecture. The limits in this case are compact "tree-like" random fractals with finite fractal dimensions and with a dense collection of hubs (infinite degree vertices) a finite number of which are identified with leaves to form shortcuts. In a special case, we show that the Minkowski dimension of the limiting spaces equal $(\tau-2)/(\tau-3)$ a.s., in stark contrast to the Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi scaling limit whose Minkowski dimension is 2 a.s. It is generally believed that dynamic versions of a number of fundamental random graph models, as one moves from the barely subcritical to the critical regime can be approximated by the multiplicative coalescent. In work in progress, the general theory developed in this paper is used to prove analogous limit results for other random graph models with degree exponent $\tau\in (3,4)$.Comment: 71 pages, 5 figures, To appear in Probability Theory and Related Field